Dodgers: 2020 starting rotation with (and without) question marks

A New Look, Slimmed Down Rotation

The Dodgers had nine pitchers start four games or more in 2019. If the team looks to trim payroll and to build up the farm system simultaneously while making use of prospect arms ready to pitch in 2020, Kenta Maeda and Ross Stripling should get dealt and Rich Hill should not make more than 10-15 starts.

If Maeda and Stripling go, presumably it would be in the vein of the Alex Wood trade to Cincinnati. Here’s how I compared Maeda’s trade likelihood to Wood’s after the Maeda news broke:

"Could Maeda’s fate be the same? The southpaw Wood was traded before his age-28 season with only a few years of arbitration left on his deal.  Maeda is 31 years old, and a right-hander, but he arguably has even more of a track record of consistency under his belt."

Stripling provides similar values to Maeda, except he’s dealt with more injury problems. While Maeda has thrown 400+ innings over the last three seasons, Stripling only has 287 innings, with two seasons out of three where he failed to reach the 100-inning plateau.

Stripling will be 30 years old heading into the 2020 season, which may equalize his value in comparison to Maeda, and his three years of service time mean he’ll be under team control for a good while.

With Maeda, Stripling, Hill, and presumably Ryu out of the picture, there would be 83 available starts based on the 2019 numbers. If Hill remains in LA and starts 10-15 games for the Boys in Blue, then there’d be around 70 starts to go around across three rotation spots. That’d be 23+ starts per pitcher, which would likely translate to around 120 innings (an average start length of 5.2 innings).

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Gonsolin started the most games amongst the youngsters in 2019, and he’s by far the oldest of young pitcher trio. “Cat Man” is going to be 26 in 2020 while May and Urias both will be 23 years old or younger. In 2018, Gonsolin threw around 120 innings across two minor league levels, and in 2019 that number dropped down to around 80 innings.

Urias and May both have not had the innings that Gonsolin has had over the past two seasons, which means to me that they should work much as they did in the late regular season and postseason: as tandem starters and out of the bullpen in high leverage situations.

Here’s how I envisioned May’s role as a late-inning reliever back after the NLDS loss:

"But perhaps a better comparison could be rookie Chris Sale. In his first full season in the majors in 2011 he threw 71 innings in 58 games. Sure, that’s still a far cry from the 190-200 innings he can be counted on for from 2012 to today, but it is important developmentally to face top hitters in tough situations. For the Dodgers, Dustin May could benefit from this sort of work. Just like Sale, he is lanky and has electric stuff, even if he is too inexperienced to navigate through an MLB start without his best stuff. If May could work out of the bullpen in 50 or so games and throw for five or more outs whenever required, he would likely amass 75-80 innings of work. This would serve to keep him fresh for the occasional spot start and also would make him playoff-ready out of the bullpen so that he could go into a tie game in the seventh inning instead of Kershaw or into the ninth inning instead of Kelly. If the Dodgers wanted to make May a consistent starter instead of a spot-starter and stretch reliever with stuff, they can certainly do so, but they would be making a mistake. The team does not need any more starters to awkwardly transition into the bullpen come October. They need May to work as a rookie Chris Sale."

For Urias, I envision him more as a tandem starter, either with Stripling or Gonsolin, or as a late-inning lefty to make up for missing out on the former-Giants closer Will Smith.

Ultimately, here’s how I’d project (hopefully) the Dodgers starts breakdown for 2020 amongst current starters:

Buehler: 31 starts

Kershaw: 29 starts

Tony Gonsolin: 20 starts

Julio Urias: 18 starts

Rich Hill: 12 starts

Dustin May: 12 starts

This adds up to 122, leaving 40 starts up in the air. Will the Dodgers opt to stick with in-house options to fill those 40 starts using Maeda, Stripling or both? Will they opt to bring in Cole, Hamels, or Bumgarner? That’s for the front office to know and for us to find out, but for now, I’ll just keep on speculating.